I've read about Ayn Rand, and I've read short extracts from "Atlas Shrugged", supposedly her magnum opus.

Those extracts did not inspire me to plough through the whole of "Atlas Shrugged", but I thought to be fair I ought to read a complete work of hers, so I picked up a copy of her 1938 novella "Anthem".

In a repressive, techophobic, collectivist dystopia, a young man rebels, rediscovers electricity, and then escapes from captivity to be joined by his female lover. He hopes to rebuild a society based on individualism -- "Anthem" concludes with the protagonist determined to carve into the stone portal of his fort the "sacred word EGO".

Rand's writing is lifeless, with both characters and setting being little more than vehicles for the author's ponderous didacticism. The slight romance narrative smacks of sub-Hollywood teenage fantasy, with the protagonist renaming his lover "The Golden One", followed by her dubbing him 'The Unconquered".

The concluding pages are supposed to be a poetic invocation of egoism. Instead, they come across as Rand attempting to club the reader into submission.

I am pained to learn that this book is frequently assigned in US high schools, as it is devoid of literary merit and of no great significance in literary or cultural history. If teachers or school districts want to assign a mid 20C "antitotalitarian" work, why not press copies of "1984" into students' hands?

Nevertheless my afternoon was not entirely wasted, as I can now get through the rest of my life without having to read another word of this tiresome crank, yet have a clear conscience when I describe her as possessing not a shred of literary talent, because my judgment is based on a first hand acquaintance with her writing.

#Books #Literature #USLiterature #AmericanLiterature #AynRand #Anthem #RightWing

‘Out of Order’ Sign on Urinal No Match for Free-Thinking Libertarian

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://thehardtimes.net/culture/out-of-order-sign-on-urinal-no-match-for-free-thinking-libertarian/

Out of the mire of Galt's Gulch did Neil Peart and Rush (the band) pluck the delicate flower that is 2112, which somehow manages to be the perfect rock operetta, or something like that, even though it's only twenty minutes long. Perhaps that's why it works so well! It's ridiculously long, but only as long as it needs to be for the slight, wispy, magic-faery-dust narrative of 2112 to play out. It's a genuinely charming fable, and it might be the best thing that Ayn Rand ever inspired.

Peart makes a weensy change, a saving one: in Anthem the generic protagonist's claim to greatness is cemented by his miraculous re-invention of the incandescent lamp, but in 2112 the protagonist finds the miracle, with wires that vibrate &c., and it's the strangeness of the device and its music which repels the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx. That's a much nicer basis for a boffo prog-rock track than the "they hate me because I'm smart and clever" vibe of Rand's Anthem.

Parents, do you know what your kids are reading?

#books #parenting #humour #cartoons #AynRand #adolescence #literature

Listening to Curtis Yarvin is like reading Ayn Rand, omg so bad.

#CurtisYarvin #AynRand #Libertarians #EveryoneIsTwelveNow

I figured something out this month that I’ve missed for 34 years.

I’ve been measuring whether I’m “enough” as a person—whether the chooser is adequate—rather than evaluating my choices. That’s a category error. There is no yardstick for myself qua myself. Only for things I do.

The Trap

From #AynRand’s Atlas Shrugged, Galt’s speech:

Man has no choice about his need of #SelfEsteem, his only choice is the standard by which to gauge it. And he makes his fatal error when he switches this gauge protecting his life into the service of his own destruction, when he chooses a standard contradicting existence and sets his self-esteem against reality.

I’ve been measuring myself instead of my choices. Asking “Am I rational enough?” instead of “Am I exercising rationality in this choice?” Treating the volitional entity—the chooser—as if it were subject to pass/fail evaluation.

But you can’t be “wrong in person.” You can only make wrong choices. The chooser is the precondition for those concepts to mean anything.

The Invariant

The concept comes from topology: an invariant remains unchanged when a structure is transformed. @gregeganSF’s Diaspora explores this for consciousness—what persists across memory edits, substrate changes, simulated deaths.

The invariant isn’t the contents of consciousness. It’s the structure of being the thing that experiences. The observer. The integrator. The chooser.

Applied to #identity: I am an existent with volitional consciousness. That’s my identity, metaphysically. Not “I have consciousness” (dualism), but “I am” this integrated entity.

The invariant is the volitional structure itself. Everything else—memories, achievements, mistakes, consequences—is what that structure produces.

What I Wrote Before I Understood It

From my story “La Petite Mort”:

She wanted to keep being Thalindra. Wanted to keep having thoughts, even painful ones. Wanted to keep waking up every morning, tired and aching and alone, because waking up meant she was still there to do the waking. Wanted existence as what she was—this particular configuration that was specifically hers.

The preference was immediate. Simple. Undeniable. Hers.

And it was enough.

I gave my character what I couldn’t give myself: acceptance of the invariant without audit.

Now I have it too.

The Correction

I am the standard by which my choices are measured, not the thing being measured.

You evaluate actions. Not the volitional entity that generates them.

If you accept your choices as yours—made with what you knew, under your constraints—you can accept yourself. Not because you’ve proven worthiness. Because you are the chooser, and that’s A is A applied to you.

Clear. Weightless. Real.

#philosophy #Objectivism